


as we forgive those who trespass against us

by De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-13
Updated: 2011-06-13
Packaged: 2017-10-20 09:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/211436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean have a conversation about crime, punishment, forgiveness, and brining. Castiel eavesdrops.</p>
            </blockquote>





	as we forgive those who trespass against us

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for 6.22!
> 
> Written for the spnspringfling exchange, for, as it turns out, kazie_oh. Uses the prompt “domestic challenges” and the pairing “gen (Sam, Dean and Castiel).” Yeah, it’s Thanksgiving fic for a spring celebration, idek.

Castiel has followed Dean and Sam Winchester, with and without their awareness, through many of the transient rooms where they make their life. It’s a habit he has found difficult to abandon in the months of their time that have passed since he assumed his Godhead. Since Dean turned away from him and Sam stabbed him in the back and he let them go.

So he eavesdrops, night after night. Of course he overhears their plans, but that is immaterial. None of their attempts against him would succeed, even if he were taken unawares. He is out of their league now. Even the boys who thwarted archangels can’t aspire to defeat God. No. Castiel is not here for strategy. Something in him still believes that if he listens to Dean and Sam they will one day be compelled to listen to him. Even though he will never make them aware of his presence.

Their current lodging, a day’s drive from the smoking dot on the map that was once Marfa, Texas, is more elaborate than those the Winchesters usually choose. There is a small kitchen area off the main room. Sam is there, struggling to wrap the carcass of a bird in thin metal foil. Dean is at the table. Castiel is familiar with his expression. He has seen it often, Dean’s face turned inward, the two thin lines between his eyebrows that signify pain.

Both his hands are bandaged. Burns, and a few of the small bones are broken. If he concentrates, Castiel can sense the thrum of Dean’s discomfort, half subdued by drugs. There is infection, but it is retreating. Whatever medications they have applied are adequate. He considers for a moment healing the damage, but it would be foolish and unnecessary. It would give his presence away. And Dean had cursed his name, spat it out in a blasphemous litany, trying to lift the still smoldering beam, then letting it drop. Castiel had turned away, invisible as he is now, leaving it to Sam to lever the beam off Dean’s hands, to pull him backwards until they both went to their knees, coughing in the smoke and reddish dust. Ironic. The action he took against Marfa is not one of the things Castiel has done with a view to teaching the Winchesters to kneel.

It had been regrettable. But Castiel had not acted lightly. He had walked the streets of the place before he destroyed it, read their billboards, set foot in their churches. They understood, far better than Dean and Sam, the grammar of divine justice, the vocabulary of fire and brimstone. They had surely known, choosing to harbor rebel angels, that they would fall to his Father’s weapons. And Dean Winchester is arrogant, if he thinks he is the only one who wept.

Sam finishes in the kitchen, returns to the table where Dean is sitting and stands beside his chair, leaning his shoulder against the wall with his arms folded on his chest.

“So,” he says. “We’re doing it. As soon as Bobby gets here, we’re doing it.”

“Don’t see that we have much choice,” says Dean. “Won’t work, anyway. But we’re trying.”

Dean is correct. It will not work. But this does not seem to be the issue troubling Sam.

“Tell me one thing, Dean,” he says, “Would you be going ahead, you and Bobby, if it were me? Heading out there with the fucking holy hand grenade of Antioch if it were me you were lobbing it at?”

The weapon Bobby is retrieving is not a hand grenade, nor does it originate in Antioch. Castiel is briefly puzzled. Even if their plans have changed, however, they will be no more successful.

Dean looks up at Sam.

“What, you think we shouldn’t? Because you fucking understand Cas or some shit like that? You were there in Marfa. You want to explain to those dead kids that you won’t stop the fucking God who rained fire and brimstone on them because of some there but for the grace of God thing you’ve got going? Grace of God is a pretty damn funny concept right now, Sam.”

“No! That’s not what I meant. I just, Dean, I went so far over the line. And I could have kept going. And no one would have stopped me. Do _you_ want to tell those kids the God who murdered them only gets stopped because he was your friend and not your brother?”

Dean’s eyes narrow, his face flushes red. He stands, pushing back his chair, crowding up to Sam. Castiel almost feels an echo of fear, though there is no threat to him in this room.

“Maybe I could have, Sam. Maybe I could have taken you down, if you’d wasted a couple of thousand people. Is that what you wanted to hear? Cause let me tell you, you have no fucking right to tell me what I would or wouldn’t have done. You’ve got no fucking right to lecture me on this.”

Dean Winchester is a few inches shorter than his brother, but he doesn’t appear so now. Sam takes a step backward. Then Dean lifts his bandaged hands, like a surrender, and sits down again, shoulders slumping. “Point is, Sam, you didn’t. We’ll never know and I’m fucking glad we never found out. Cas did. He blasted that town. We do what we have to do.”

“Dean . . .” says Sam.

“Can we not do this now, Sam? I can’t take a piss by myself, I’m on the run from God, and I’m drinking beer through a fucking straw. It was you wanted to do Thanksgiving. How about an evening off from the subject of killing friends and family?”

Castiel hears Sam sigh. He walks back to Dean, picks up the brown glass bottle from the table and holds it toward him.

“You shouldn’t be drinking beer at all, not on top of antibiotics and painkillers,” he says. “I’m only indulging you because it’s a holiday.”

Dean takes a loud slurp through the straw; Castiel is almost certain the belch that follows is deliberate.

“Nice try, Sam. You’re indulging me because you hoped I’d pass out and never know what you did to that turkey,” says Dean. “Talk about unforgivable things.”

Sam gives Dean a strange look.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Yeah, you’d better be,” says Dean. “It’s not like roasting is so damn difficult. How you ended up with something that was raw on the inside and burnt on the outside and tasted like a salt lick I’ll never know.”

“No,” says Sam. His voice is insistent, as though he is still arguing with his brother. “Sorry you might have had to stop me. That I could have done stuff where you’d have to stop me.”

Dean kicks at the leg of the table.

“Dammit, Sam. Will you fucking drop this? I meant it, after Rufus, OK? Blanket apology, blanket forgiveness. Anything up to that turkey, you got a clean slate. Post-turkey I’m weighing my options.”

Castiel wonders when in his time watching the Winchesters and dealing with them he learned to read their faces. Learned to be curious enough to try. He can see Sam considering whether to pursue the conversation, deciding not to.

“I thought the cranberry sauce came out well,” he says, instead of whatever remark he had intended.

“Point,” says Dean. “Tell you what, I’ll make it quick.”

“And the potatoes.”

“I’ll throw in mostly painless. Don’t push it, though. You still salted and burned the bird.”

“I _brined_ it, Dean. You’re supposed to brine it.” Sam’s mock defense is growing impassioned. Sam Winchester still has a fondness for being right in small things, however wrong he has acknowledged himself to be in large ones.

“One, it was an unnatural act, Sammy. And, two, you did it wrong.” From the waggle of his eyebrows, Castiel suspects that Dean is about to expand on the theme of unnatural acts. It is probably not necessary that he overhear this.

He prepares to withdraw his presence – he is not omnipresent; either theologians are prone to exaggeration or he has not fully mastered his Godhead -- but Sam is leaning forward with a triumphant smirk. Castiel recalls that Sam had once wished to become a lawyer. Human courts do not much resemble the justice of heaven, but Castiel recognizes lawyers when he sees them.

“Aren’t you neglecting a vital piece of evidence in my defense? I made you pie, dude. With my own two hands. I bought a rolling pin and slaved over a hot oven. You can’t say pie doesn’t rate some kind of pardon.”

Dean holds up his hand in a gesture of caution. His expression is carefully judicious.

“You sure you want to go there? Risky, Sam, risky. I haven’t tried the pie yet. You calling a witness not knowing what they’ll say? I seem to remember that backfiring a few times on _Boston Legal_.”

“You don’t scare me, with your terrifying TV precedents. I stand by the pie. I stand or fall by the pie.”

Dean grins.

“Right, then. Double or nothing. You did right by my pie, all is forgiven. You wronged the pie, vengeance is mine.”

Vengeance is neither Dean’s habit nor his privilege. Nonetheless, Castiel pauses to consider the pie cooling on the room’s narrow counter.

This isn’t something he’s tried since assuming his new nature. He can discern the component ingredients – the dull orange filling is based on pumpkin -- but he can’t judge whether the flavors or textures of the pie would be pleasing to a human, to Dean. It is frustrating; this is a question he would once have taken to Dean. Although in this instance consultation would defeat the purpose.

Even now, though, Castiel is not without resources. Somewhere in the complex roil of exiled souls and angelic nature and Godhead that Castiel has been learning to negotiate there still exist remnants of Jimmy Novak. His soul is long gone, but certain instincts and experiences have left traces. Castiel concentrates, melding his current perceptions with Jimmy’s.

The pie needs salt, and cardamom. The crust is overly moist. The filling at the center is runny.

Castiel makes the requisite adjustments. Sam will surely be forgiven now.

Castiel and Dean are past one another’s forgiveness. Long post-turkey, Dean might say. But it is unlikely, Castiel judges, even if he himself had not intervened, that Sam would have suffered any very severe consequences for his errors in cookery. It is possible that even Castiel could have hope, if he ever chose to want it.


End file.
